| Half-Ass Movie Review: The Princes & The Frog |
| Written by Don Kowalewski |
| Wednesday, 30 December 2009 14:02 |
 Your kids are still home from school. They are still bored and fighting with each other, driving you crazy, and if you are somewhere in the Midwest, you are snowed in or freezing - or both. Why not head to your local multi-screen mega movie complex and see Disney's The Princess & The Frog?I was recently talking with someone about the lost art of the animated feature length movie. Heck, or even actual drawn cartoon shows. Everything is CGI nowadays. And I wondered aloud if Hollywood and Disney had determined that "cartoons" were ancient devices and not worth the time. Or maybe animated cartoons, which might just be computer animation created to look like drawings, were too expensive - and why would kids want 2-D when they can have 3-D?
Turns out, I don't care about the answer. Disney knows it doesn't matter if you use hand puppets made from paper bags; what matters is the story you tell. Disney's The Princess & The Frog, like most every animated Disney classic, is based on a timeless fairy tale, this one being E.D. Baker's The Frog Princess, which is based on the Grimm fairy tale, The Frog Prince. And what Disney does, as it has done 48 times previously for nearly a hundred years, is tell the story better, and with brilliant scoring and compositions, and endearing characters and sub-plots. I like Disney movies. But when Disney is at it's best is when it's telling great stories. The Princess & The Frog is a great story. Check that ...great stories, plural. It's a story of hard work, dedication, and following your dreams. It's a love story - three love stories. It's a story of seeing the big picture and appreciating what you have along your journey. It speaks to the dreamer in all of us. There's good v. evil. There's magic. And Oprah. The main story follows a girl, Tiana, and her lifelong dream of opening a restaurant in New Orleans, a restaurant that will act as a living tribute to her father who fostered and encouraged her cooking hobby. Despite many distractions and obstacles life presents her, she never loses focus. She signs a lease, but then loses the lease. And then there's a frog, who is actually a prince from somewhere overseas who convinces her to kiss him and (you've seen the commercials), it backfires. Instead of the frog turning into a prince, Tiana turns into a frog. And she's mostly mad because she won't get the restaurant. But then something happens while she's trying to figure out how to turn back into a human - she falls in love, sees the bigger picture, finds herself, and thwarts the bad guys who got her into the crazy "I'm a frog" mess to begin with. And when I summarize it that way, you probably think it isn't worth you time.
You'd be wrong to think that. Someone once said that every story that could be told has already been told. But like I mentioned earlier, the brilliance is in the telling of the story. Disney's The Princess & The Frog is a great story and then Disney rounds it out with some of the catchiest tunes I've heard in a Disney movie since Beauty & The Beast. Most of the tunes are heavily influenced by the jazz and creole influence of New Orleans and Louisiana. More than once, the children in the theater were dancing in their seats. And my feet were a tappin'. Then throw in a hilarious crocodile, a simple, pure firefly, and a vivacious gypsy swamp woman, and you have the next Disney classic you'll simply have to own on DVD. But before you watch it on DVD, as I said, get out of the house and take it in on the big screen - the way a beautifully animated piece of art like this is meant to be seen. Plus, at least for an hour or two, you won't have to hear your kids fight. I'll give it 5 beans. Happy New Year!
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email This
Hits: 331 Trackback(0)TrackBack URI for this entryComments (0)
Write commentThis content has been locked. You can no longer post any comment.
|
Show/Hide comment form